Overview of Toolkits

Over the last decade, MicroSavehas emerged as an industry leader in the area of market-led microfinance, contributing significantly to the global debate on the importance of broadening the boundaries of financial service provision to the poor. MicroSavewas a founding member of the Product Development Taskforce, which was established by CGAP to promote a coherent and high-quality approach to the development of toolkits and training around this growth area in microfinance(members included representatives from CGAP, USAID’s MBP and AIMS projects, and GTZ). In addition, MicroSave was essentially the operational wing of the CGAP Savings Mobilisation Working Group and the current Programme Director was the Chair of the working group for many years.

MicroSave has received a great deal of international attention and accolades for its work in the areas of market research and product development for microfinance. Many would argue that MicroSave put the issue of “listening to clients” on the microfinance map in a relatively short period of time and with very limited resources. But MicroSave continues to expand on the range of issues on which its renowned systematic and structured, toolkit-based approaches are used.

MicroSave’s primary strength continues to be the interplay between its study, Action Research Partner (ARP) and toolkit development programmes, which create remarkable synergies and provide unique opportunities to 1) identify practice-based issues, 2) conduct market and ARP practice-based studies on these issues, 3) develop draft toolkits, 4) test and refine these toolkits with the ARPs, and thus 5) disseminate credible, practice-based, practical toolkits and information.